I felt overwhelmingly sorry for myself. My emotions were in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle that had been tossed across the floor. My insides felt as though they had been vacuum-cleaned: the last vestiges of summer had been wrested from me. I closed my eyes and recalled Agnes in her brightly coloured smocks smiling, chattering, singing, paintbrushes in both hands. I pictured the view from her attic. Such serenity and visual opulence. I refused to allow myself to brood upon images of Pierre at the bottom of that sea. I yearned for someone to take me in their arms, hold me and reassure me with words whispered into my hair that everything was going to come back together.
The dull, raw ache in my abdomen was throbbing, like a heartbeat, which was an illusion because the heart, along with the foetus, had been removed. What had I done? The act that I had consented to was irreversible. There was no bringing that life back.
Two deaths.
Had someone, a hospital staff member, notified Connor that I was not going to be discharged that evening? I hoped he was not sitting in Reception waiting for me. My legs were too unsteady for me to walk downstairs. In any case, there was the trickling blood. I had no means of contacting him. I looked about in search of a nurse but saw none.
And then, as if by osmosis, Connor materialized at the door of the ward. I gave a sheepish wave. He spotted me – third bed to the right – and made his way to the chair at my side, a cheery smile lighting his handsome, eager face crowned with a head of ginger curls. He could make his fortune shooting shampoo commercials, I was thinking, but would never have told him so because he would have been affronted at such a prospect.
He was never going to sell out. Neither of us would. We were both Committed to Our Art. True warriors of our trade and dreams.
‘Sorry. Have you been waiting downstairs?’ I asked, feeling a bit embarrassed that I was greeting him in a nightie and no make-up, with wild, uncombed hair.
What a pal.
I was more used to seeing him in a leotard during voice and movement classes than in his rather natty outdoor clothes. I knew his ambition, which was as bold and naive as my own, and a few of his weaknesses. His fear, for example, of emotional exposure, revealed during drama classes. Was it because he was gay? Did his parents know? Had he confided in them?
He had never discussed any of that stuff with me.
Homosexuality between consenting males, adults of twenty-one years and over, had been legalized in Britain eighteen months earlier, gaining Royal Assent on 27 July 1967. But Connor had not yet reached twenty-one. Any sexual act he performed could have landed him in prison. The Abortion Act had come into effect in April 1968, a mere nine months earlier. Every time we smoked a joint we risked arrest. Not that I was doing drugs any more. Not a puff since the summer. Even so, Connor and I, in our different ways, were both living on the edges of legality and acceptability. I quite liked that, though: it made me believe we were truer artists, and bonded.
To keep me company for a bit and lift my spirits, Connor recounted an anecdote or two from his day at college. We both managed another chuckle, then he lifted himself from the chair. ‘They said to collect you in the morning, about ten. Shall I come back at about nine thirty, help you with your bag?’
‘It’s Saturday,’ I replied, as though that should relieve him of his duty. ‘Maybe you have something on.’
He shook his head and grinned. ‘But I’ll be on my way now. I’ve got a date.’ He winked coquettishly. ‘See you in the morning.’
I nodded, deciding then, even with my eyes cast away from his open face, that Connor would be my best friend for ever. Once upon a time, not so long ago, I recalled, I had thought the same about Peter …
Peter. For the first time in a while I thought of him and wondered how he was getting along. ‘Wherever you are, Peter – Paris, I suppose – I hope you’ve met someone lovely, someone who treats you better than I did, and that you’ve filed me away in the box labelled “That Disastrous Past”.’
January 1969
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.
Our seats were perfect, so close to the front we could almost touch hands with the performers. I felt so involved, so much a part of it. My age, my generation. Well, the actors were a little older than us, but by less than a decade in most cases. Connor and I sang along to the tunes, all of which we both knew by heart. Every single line. Connor had the LP. He had lent it to me before Christmas, to get me all excited about this evening, he’d said, but in reality to cheer me up after my hospital stay.
The show really cheered me up. My companion had proved himself such a stalwart since my operation. At the end of the evening the audience in the stalls rose to its feet and swarmed towards the front of the stage. We were literally swept along with the joy. Alongside the orchestra pit, we danced and sang with our arms above our heads, swaying from side to side. I felt so positive and alive. For one fleeting moment I was reminded of Paris, of rue Gay-Lussac, the night we heard the nightingale sing. And I shoved that memory to the back of my brain.
Many in the audience were wearing long beads and hippie clothes, flowered shirts and bandanas round their foreheads. I glanced up to the dress circle, then to the gods. All the way to the very top level of the theatre, the spectators were on their feet, chorusing and clapping, raising the roof. A tear pricked my eye. We are the generation of hope, I said to myself. Or those a little older than me are. Get out of Vietnam. Free love. It had just turned 1969. We were creeping towards the end of the swinging sixties, but America’s longest war still lingered on, haunting and shocking us on TV news programmes, and last year’s Paris riots had come to what? A handful of changes at the end of the day, with a price of violence too high.
Where and why had it gone wrong?
I still wanted to change the world.
The cast reprised ‘Aquarius’ four times. They stayed on stage for a while, chanting and clapping along with us, and it was tantamount to a party, like a peaceful, rapturous prelude to a revolution. I felt high on the atmosphere, elated, and yearned to be up on the stage with the actors. I threw back my head, laughing. Hope had been triggered. I was fired by potency, reminding myself, while singing my lungs out, what I was training for. Theatre can have an impact on the world, even if the dreams and revolutions of last year’s riots, marches and protests across the planet had not effected the reforms we all dreamed of. We artists could make a difference through our work. I looked up into Connor’s beaming face, his fantastic singing voice rising towards the ceiling. ‘Thank you for this,’ I yelled. His head was nodding and keeping time with his dancing feet.
There was every reason to be optimistic. Paris was behind me, but my future was not.
A couple of days after Connor and I had been to see Hair, I was called to the college secretary’s office. Such a summons usually portended bad news. One poor student had already been asked to leave. The reason given: not suitable for the rigorous training. It had put the fear of God into all of us in my group. Securing a place there was far from sufficient. The commitment and work ethic could not let up, but my desire to work was, always had been and remained tenacious.
The reason for the summons: the pinched-face bat, with her sallow skin and primly pinned hair, was in possession of a letter addressed to me.
‘This arrived for you, Grace. I’m not sure why your mail should be delivered to this establishment. We are not a poste restante service,’ she sniped, as she passed the envelope across the desk.
I was puzzled.
‘Please refrain from using this address in the future. I work alone and am too busy for such nonsense.’
I nodded an inarticulate promise that I would make sure it didn’t happen again.
Outside in the corridor, I took a deep breath. It hadn’t been the guillotine, thank the Lord. College was my only lifeline. My future dreams were the banisters holding me steady as I climbed. A lifeline that my work provided.
The envelope was white, of quality stationery. I turned it over. Fren
ch stamps. Oh, God. I needed a chair but not in the coffee bar. Privacy. I glanced at my watch. I had a voice lesson in four minutes. Late arrival to class achieved a black mark. I stuffed the letter into my embroidered shoulder bag and thundered down the stairs. It would wait, though my heart was beating as if someone had just rewound it and forgotten to stop.
It was evening before I pulled the missive out of my bag. I was in the girls’ changing room, bracing myself for the brief walk back to my digs. I sat on the bench and stared again at the envelope. My name and the address were handwritten with black ink, a bold, elegant script. Nothing on the reverse gave me any indication as to the identity of the sender, although I had an inkling.
Pierre? An impossible, improbable, out-of-this-world flight of broken-hearted melancholic fancy. How could it be? Pierre, who had never known my surname, never enquired it, as I had not known his, was decomposing in his bottom-of-the-sea resting place. Or had his body been recovered? Was that the purpose of this communication? Cassis police station contacting me to return for another interview, or …? I peeled open the triangular flap and pulled out the folded letter, which was four single sheets, each handwritten only on one side.
The author of the letter was Peter. I would have put my money on it being from him, if I’d had any, even if he had never been given the address of my parents or this college.
Dearest Grace,
Please don’t be angry with me for tracking you down. You had mentioned on one occasion in Paris the location of your future conservatoire. After that, it needed no Sherlock Holmes to discover the full address.
Don’t throw this away! Please, I beg you to read on. Hear me out.
There is so much I want to say to you. If only you were here at my side. My heart is full.
Those last few days at Agnes’s eviscerated me, after such a splendid time together, so many months of discovery and happiness. You arrived with the spring and brought fresh life to me. And when you left, winter had crept our way early.
I fell in love with you from the moment you sat down in that little café on the Left Bank across from the Sorbonne on that early April morning, Friday, the fifth. The date is imprinted on my brain. That first sighting of you, dragging your bedraggled self and backpack in off the street, so lithe, so beautiful, your long auburn hair swaying with the effort, your kooky outfit. I watched you and prayed you would choose the table beside mine. You did. I knew it was Fate watching kindly over me. It seemed to me then, on that first spring day, that you were, you are, my destiny. Please don’t let these words frighten you.
And when I watched you at the barricades, working all night, brandishing your faith, your newly won enthusiasm with such gusto and courage, I was overcome with pride. You seemed to understand what I – we were fighting for. I knew then that we had so much to share, a life ahead of us.
Agnes adores you, as I knew she would. And she has warned me and I have understood that you are not yet ready for commitment. But there is time, Grace, time. We have all the time you need.
And then into our summer came that man. An individual who seemed to have no purpose but to make money from peddling illegal substances. I could have tolerated his arrival, pitching his tent and car close to Agnes’s land – who was I to turn him away? But I lost you from the moment he arrived. How did I lose you? You seemed dazed, bewitched by him. And your invitation to him to stay in the house with us, how could you not have seen the rejection that would cause me? All the way, during my drive back from Italy, I had been relishing the prospect of the two of us alone for ten or so days, there in that idyllic setting. Agnes’s gift to us.
I was gelded, not only by his presence in our lives but by the manner in which he seemed to take you over and deprive you of your reason.
The door to the changing room opened and I instinctively shoved the letter onto the bench and slid it beneath my bottom, looking up apprehensively, guardedly. It was Tom, the kindly old caretaker. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you girls had all gone off for the night. I was about to lock up.’
‘I’ll be out of here in two minutes, Tom. S-sorry to have held you up.’
‘Don’t you fret yourself, Grace.’
I shoved the letter back into my bag, pulled on my coat and hurried home. Peter’s words had churned me up.
Back in my room at Witches Court, I had no small change for the gas heater so I curled up on the carpet, huddled tight against the bed with my leopard-print coat draped over me, like a rug, retrieved the letter from my bag and continued reading.
I saw you. Yes, I saw you, and if I could unsee it, I would gouge out my eyes in exchange for the peace of mind I have lost. Even now when I picture that first witnessing of the two of you lying wrapped in one another’s embrace in the sand … You, my darling, naked in his arms … I went directly to the house, broke down and cried. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t have faced you. You would have noticed that evening, if you’d had eyes for anyone besides him, which you didn’t, that my mood had changed, my confidence withered.
Let us not talk about what happened when you went into the sea … his drowning. I shan’t write about that night. It haunts me, and it always will. Those last few days of you and I together haunt me. If only he had never entered our lives …
With a little distance, do you feel the same? Do you see now that he was an intrusion, a menace? A stranger from another seam of life?
My parents are back living in Knightsbridge at my grandmother’s house. I think we talked about it once in Paris. I am still studying at the Sorbonne, soon to have my master’s. The next time I am in London, which will be mid-February, can we meet? Please say yes.
I have a small studio now near place Maubert in the fifth arrondissement. You would be welcome here too, if you fancy a weekend back in Paris. The address is at the top of the page. At least, let us meet in London. Let us try to pick up the pieces.
Je t’aime énormément.
Peter
I read the letter several times. How could I have allowed myself to wound him so profoundly, ‘gelding’ and ‘eviscerating’ him? I was racked with shame for my behaviour towards him.
I folded the letter back into its envelope and slid it beneath my mattress. I would keep it. I did not want to dismiss his words. I needed to be reminded of them. I had been thoughtless towards him, horribly selfish. However, I would not reply, not even to apologize. Nor would I agree to see him again. At this remove of several months, had my perceptions changed towards Pierre? Had he been an intrusion? I still ached for him. A part of me was deficient without him.
The kindest gesture I could offer Peter was to keep my distance, to ignore his invitation, to remain silent. At some point he would meet another girl to fall in love with and he would forget me. I had caused too much damage already.
After that letter, the days and weeks grew long and dark. A wet, endlessly drawn-out winter compounded my misery. I yearned to be somewhere else, a different place, but where? To return to our beach? No: a location concocted from my imaginings, rich and exotic, imbued with the hues of Agnes’s canvases, a warm and sunny location where Pierre was attentive at my side. Work was my solace. I lived and breathed through my work.
I received one more letter from Peter in March ’69, inviting me to share his twenty-first birthday celebrations in London with him, along with a group of his friends and his parents. I ignored it, as I had ignored the first communication. I asked myself whether he had received any news of Pierre – and if he had, would he inform me? I doubted it.
I was determined to move forward along my solitary path, learn my craft, build my career, wall in my heart and shelve all retrospection of that summer of ’68. The chapter was closed. I threw myself into the characters I played with a ferocious energy. To be anyone but Grace.
The Present
The heather was blossoming – full-blown summer had trumpeted its way to our doors. Hands clutching a mug of coffee, I was sitting outside at the back, having carried out one of the kitchen ch
airs. I was facing the mountains, not the sea. For many reasons, I couldn’t look to the horizon today.
There was too much at stake.
The first Sunday in June. It seemed so much hotter, clammier, for this season than in recent years. On the hillsides, the cicadas were deafening, with their raucous mating calls, drowning the arrival of a car yet to appear down the lane and in view. Cream and citrus-yellow butterflies were making the most of the nectar-rich scrublands beyond the house. I was tuning in to nature, to the environment, as I so frequently do when I am alone and need support.
Alone. Peter in the clinic. His operation scheduled for eight the following morning. I had said my goodbye, my au revoir, and I wouldn’t see him again until he regained consciousness. It was going to be a long, solitary twenty-four hours.
Sweet-natured Jenny had set off with her two daughters on Friday from the station in Marseille, returning to the UK. I drove them myself, waved them off. She would have stayed on, willingly, but Peter had requested that he and I were by ourselves for the upcoming weeks of convalescence.
Last night, as the sun was beginning to dip and the air was busy with dragonflies, gnats and geckos on the walls coming out to feed, my husband and I had sat together, side by side, looking out across the calm sea. Slender deep-green lizards were darting between wall crevices and the safety of flower pots.
Peter took my hand. His fingers stroked mine. A fingertip settled on my wedding ring as it had done possibly a thousand times before but on this occasion the gesture carried an enhanced significance. He said, ‘Grace, we both know there’s a risk to this wretched procedure. Ssh, don’t be agitated, it’s a small-percentage risk but it exists and we shouldn’t shy away from it. So, ssh … let me say what I need to, please. Should the unthinkable happen, my will is prepared and you know all about that …’
The House on the Edge of the Cliff Page 28